Totalitarianism on Screen: The Art and Politics of The Lives of Others

7. On the Impossibility of Withdrawal: Life in the Gray Zone

7 on the ImPossIBIlIty of WIthdraWal Life in the Gray Zone Marketa Goetz-Stankiewicz Wretchedness was the lot of those who, under any circumstances, remained in the middle. —Ivan Klíma Among the Polish writer Sławomir Mrożek’s delightful fables there is one entitled “The Lion.” The scene is a Roman amphitheater where the Roman citizens as well as the emperor are watching an entertainment. I retell it here in abbreviated form. A group of Christians is huddling at the center of the arena. A roaring group of lions emerges from the tunnel. Gayus, the keeper of the lions, is checking whether all the beasts have come into the arena when he notices one lion has stopped at the entrance and is calmly chewing a carrot. Gayus prods him with his long pole. After all, it is his duty to see that none of the lions remains idle. Repeated prodding does not help. The lion merely turns his head and says, “Oh, leave me alone.” Gayus gets worried. If the supervisor catches him neglecting his duties he will soon find himself among the victims in the arena. A discussion ensues during which Gayus pleads with the lion to at least run around in the arena and roar without jumping on any of those wretches there. “I’m no fool,” the lion says finally. “Hasn’t it occurred to you that one of these days the Christians might come to power?” Fixing his wise gaze on the stunned Gayus, he continues: “And then what? Investigations, rehabili155 156 Marketa Goetz-Stankiewicz tations, and those up there in the amphitheatre will say, ‘It wasn’t us, it was the lions.’ And I want to save my skin. There will be witnesses to say that all I did was eat a carrot. Mind you, it’s filthy stuff, this carrot.” Gayus hesitantly manages to object: “But all your colleagues in there, they’re all gobbling up the Christians with gusto.” “Stupid beasts, shortsighted opportunists,” is the lion’s curt answer. After some intense thought and a good deal of stutter Gayus finally manages to ask the lion a key question: “And . . . should they, those Christians , come to power . . . will you then testify that I didn’t force you to do anything?”1 The ironic wisdom of this brief fable reaches directly and deeply into the atmosphere permeating two Central European films that deal with societies under a totalitarian dictatorship: Czechoslovakia under Nazi occupation and East Germany under communism. The films are multileveled explorations of human nature under coercive political circumstances. The Czech film Musíme si pomáhat, circulating in English under the somewhat confusing title Divided We Fall, was made in 2000 by the Czech director Jan Hřebejk (film script by Petr Jarchovský), with the well-known comic actor Boleslav Polívka in the main role.2 Seven years later, in 2007, the German film Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others) was debuted by first-time writer and director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. I will explore how the films portray the lives of people, “normal” citizens trying to live decent and ordinary lives, who get sucked into a murderous political system and become its tools, even collaborators. Basic, perennial human qualities that could be regarded as innocuous in themselves—ambitions , desires, fears, lassitude, or indifference—appear as the main drives that propel the protagonists into a moral and existential quicksand from which there is no return, unless it comes from a drastic reversal of the situation : the downfall of the ruling regime. This is the case in both films as the filmmakers use the reversal, each in his own unique way, as a harmonizing coda to the often-discordant symphony of the characters’ lives. Although ideology as such (National Socialism in the former film, communism in the latter) is not explicitly mentioned but is recognizable only by its visual iconic signs—uniforms, helmets, flags, and the use of certain typical phrases—it is obvious that it exists everywhere. Like Ibsen’s Boyg, it is shown to penetrate the entire atmosphere and the characters’ very lives. My main concern is the films’ dealing with the so-called gray zone—a kind of ethical no-man’s-land—in which the characters find themselves and On the Impossibility of Withdrawal 157 try to maintain an uneasy balance, consciously or unconsciously. Living under what Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn simply called “the...